Welcome to the 1st post by Kevin Poindexter, Co-Founder of 86 Search. Having worked as a Senior Recruiting Leader and Trainer for large national search firms, and now owning his own agency, our team values any knowledge Kevin shares. We hope to share the same value with you.
Contents
Why “Good Interviewers” Don’t Exist
Why “Good Interviewers” Don’t Exist
There is no such thing as a “Good Interviewer”, only a good interview process. Even the most experienced leaders, with tens of thousands of interviews under their belt, can be routinely fooled by savvy candidates.
Early in my career, the owner of our company hired a new leader for our team. This person seemed incredible. They were fun, kept us laughing, and by their account were extremely productive. There were lots of stories of large deals they closed and all the owners and CEOs they knew. We had a great first 6 months! We all were producing at high levels and having a ton of fun. The new leader was first in billing and had brought in several new clients. Everything seemed great until our owner reached out to collect invoices from this person’s clients. To our surprise, they had never heard of us or our team leader! All this person’s deals and new clients had been falsified.
Termination was immediate of course. Want to know the kicker? This person was almost immediately hired by the Senior Vice President of a large national firm into a position of greater responsibility! You can probably guess the end of that story.
The point of this story is that as interviewers, we all get fooled. The owner that hired this person had every reason to be confident in their interview skills, but they made an incredibly bad decision because they failed to have or adhere to an interview process.
The portion of those interviews that was missing in this story was that no one ever checked references on this candidate. A 10-minute phone call could have saved each company tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours in onboarding, training, managing, terminating, and hiring a new replacement employee.
5 Tips for Interviewers
There are 5 simple steps in an interview that, if we follow every time, will greatly reduce our chances of getting fooled in interviews. These steps will also greatly increase our chances of hiring and retaining great employees.
#1 – Do Your Research
Showing up on time and having done your research on the background of the candidate by reading their resume and/or application and forming specific questions.
#2 – Follow a Guide
Following an interview guide and asking each candidate all the questions and documenting their answers.
#3 – Multiple Interviews
Conducting multiple interviews in multiple formats by multiple interviewers, while still moving through the interview process quickly.
#4 – Working Interviews
Employ work sample testing such as stages or paid working interviews to objectively evaluate candidate’s skills while giving them a realistic preview of the job.
#5 – Check References
Check references. Collect information on the candidate’s past performance by asking them for references that were former direct supervisors. Call those supervisors and ask them a standard set of questions.
Do these 5 things consistently to significantly decrease the number of times you get “fooled” by candidates, increase the number of good candidates you hire, and increase the length of the time they stay with your organization.